BY CATHERINE KYLE
For Ghosts
This one’s for the ghosts
alive
or dead
or in whatever state.
You need it? Then
this one’s for you.
An honorary
ghoul.
If candles won’t light
get new candles. Throw
the old ones out.
If words you have sung
form architecture
windows and pillars
shadows and beams
that haunts you, well then
burn it down. Light
the bouquet,
pansies and forget-me-nots
all blazing.
Touch it to
the load-bearing walls
now. Cast
your corsage in.
Dig a grave of soot
and ash and
lie in it.
And watch.
A Garden Ghost
A ghost revisits
the body of a girl,
a skeleton, now
with lace gloves.
The ghost sheds ghost tears
one two three
that plunk the bony ribs.
Clean and blue as buttons, like
a silky workday blouse.
The ghost turns on the garden hose
and does not turn it off.
irresponsible
unreliable
groundskeeper
if you ask me.
The water fills up
thyme and nettle beds,
the poison ivy.
Fish swim by and huddle in
her sternum and
her hips.
A River Ghost
I want to talk
to the river but the river
is either silent or
roaring. No in
-between, no inside
voice. It pouts
or throws my things.
Already it has broken
thirteen teacups wrapped in paper,
gold-kissed rims and
painted cobalt landscapes
jigsaw crunch.
The river does not speak
in words. It speaks
in overflowings. Creeping
over sandy shores
and soaking my new boots.
It will not talk
to me, it will not talk
to me, it will not tell
me what
it wants. It wants
to be angry,
I think. It wants
to Cubist all
my mirrors.
Look at me, it seems to growl.
My face: a rippled blot.
A Family Ghost
Ghost girl touches the family
photograph, edges creased, gnawed
-on by time. Runs her pointer
finger down the silky paper
seam. It crosses the breast
of a woman, fold a sash imitating
quiver. Echo of what weaponry
she might have gripped and shot.
Ghost girl knows many weapons
are invisible. Knows many injuries
are guarded under tongues.
The woman’s face is stalwart,
mouth a heart monitor
with no pulse. Ghost girl wants
to climb inside, to interview
her teeth. What was your life like?
What would you have wished
you could demolish? What would you
have saved, had you power? How was it,
your pre-ghost?
A Messy Ghost
You know how they say
you can’t die in a dream?
This
is just like that. You’re not
awake, but there’s nowhere
to go. So park it. And adapt.
Welcome to the liminal,
survival’s purgatory. Survival is
all liminal, a temporary stop. (Yet)
I want to know your breed of this,
your verbing, your endurance.
Tell me of your tinctures,
your spit-shined artillery.
Tell me of the herbs you crush
and slather as a poultice. Tell me
of the cloak you wear as you
shoulder the cold. Enter this forest.
See your breath rise into arms of cedars.
These are territories of things unforgotten
that cannot be healed, either. Here, we all
survive. Welcome to the emptied drawer,
the thousand haystacks scattered.
Weave them, now, all back together.
Sort the fleeing parts.